BuzzFeed, the somewhat new media giant, is multiplying. The company announced today that it will separate itself into two distinct departments—BuzzFeed News and a newly formed BuzzFeed Entertainment Group (BFEG)—in a move aimed at solidifying its dominance in digital video.

In a memo sent to BuzzFeed staff Tuesday afternoon, BuzzFeed C.E.O. Jonah Peretti wrote that “Having a single ‘video department’ in 2016 makes about as much sense as having a ‘mobile department.’” He continued, “Instead of organizing around a format or technology, we will organize our work to take full advantage of many formats and technologies.”

That reorganization will create a new department, BuzzFeed Entertainment, led by BuzzFeed Motion Pictures president Ze Frank. It will serve as an umbrella for all its entertainment content, including short- and long-form video, lists, quizzes, and micro-content. The group will also focus on expanding its entertainment video in New York City—outside of the massive Los Angeles lot that Frank currently oversees.

BuzzFeed News will expand under Ben Smith, the memo states, bringing its health team, global news operation, and video news under his purview.

Peretti noted that this new structure positions BuzzFeed to become something like the Paramount of the 21st century—an entertainment conglomerate built to be consumed quickly and everywhere. And whatever the future of news looks like, this move allows BuzzFeed to have a piece in shaping that, too.

“We have an opportunity to be the leading entertainment company for the mobile, social age,” he wrote. “And we are in position to build the #1 global news brand for a new generation who consume news differently than their parents, but care passionately about what is happening in a quickly-changing world. “

The news comes amid reports this year that BuzzFeed badly missed revenue targets and cut its internal projections for this year in half (a report the company denied), and worry among staffers that the company’s push into video might mean a pullback in news. Last year, Comcast’s NBCUniversal invested $200 million in BuzzFeed at a $1.5 billion valuation—a strategic partnership that suggested the digital media company was interested in more remunerative revenue streams than native advertising. With the creation of BFEG, the 10-year-old start-up appears to be evolving into something new.

“Thinking about where we fit in the industry, it’s a lot easier to think about when we’re organized as news and entertainment, than thinking about it in terms of being organized in video and Web site, or text and video,” Peretti told the Hive on Tuesday afternoon.

As to concerns over whether this means retreating from news, Peretti said he understands that the shift toward video can be “scary for people who write for a living.” But he noted that change is an industry-wide concern, not one unique to just BuzzFeed.

For BuzzFeed reporters, he said this presents an opportunity. “Reporters and writers are the ones who call people to interview them, who get scoops. So having really great reporters is something that’s valuable to our video-news operation,” he said. “Having more video-news capacity means that our reporters can write it up and also push that to our video team so they can reach an even bigger audience.”

Asked if he thinks the organizational split could lead to BuzzFeed News spinning off down the line, Peretti compared the push into both entertainment and news to what Ted Turner did with both CNN and TBS. “Back in the day, all the big incumbents would criticize CNN and TBS and make fun of them, saying they were never going to make it and that they weren’t legitimate,” he said. “They really just had a better model and stuck to it. Ted Turner didn’t care what anyone thought, and he built a news and entertainment empire side by side.”

It is interesting that Peretti invokes CNN, whose president, Jeff Zucker, took a big swat at BuzzFeed in a Variety profile earlier this month. “I don’t think Vice and BuzzFeed are legitimate news organizations,” he told the magazine. “They are native advertising shops. We crush both of them. They are not even in our same class.”

Peretti’s only reaction to Zucker’s comments: “It’s very similar to what people used to say about CNN when it was an exciting upstart, developing new models.”

We are making a big change at BuzzFeed that will simplify our
organizational structure, allow us to operate more entrepreneurially,
and help us better serve the hundreds of millions of people who enjoy
BuzzFeed each month.

In this new structure, video won't be the job of just one department.
Having a single “video department” in 2016 makes about as much sense
as having a “mobile department”. Instead, it will be something we
expand and embed across the organization. As digital video becomes
ubiquitous, every major initiative at BuzzFeed around the world will
find an expression as video, just like everything we do works on
mobile and social platforms. Instead of organizing around a format or
technology, we will organize our work to take full advantage of many
formats and technologies.

To that end, we will expand BuzzFeed News under Ben Smith’s leadership
across platforms. BuzzFeed News will encompass the work that is rooted
in reporting and journalistic independence — on topics both serious
and fun — and focused in the long term on building the trust of our
audience. Practically speaking, this means we’ll be adding some
existing editorial groups, including our health team, to the global
news operation that includes beat reporters, breaking news team,
investigative reporters, and foreign correspondents under BuzzFeed
News. Our recent expansion of video news under Henry Goldman will also
become part of the BuzzFeed News organization, and we will continue to
expand that news video team. In this new structure, Ben will focus
primarily on news, his first and enduring love.

Simultaneously, we are establishing a new department called BuzzFeed
Entertainment Group (BFEG) that will provide an umbrella for all our
entertainment content. Ze Frank will no longer focus exclusively on
video and assume a new role as President of BuzzFeed Entertainment
Group. In addition to his current team, Peggy Wang, Tommy Wesely, and
their team of talented artists, designers, and storytellers will
report up to Ze and Jeremy Briggs will join that team and continue his
work expanding entertainment video in NYC and helping people make
video for the first time. This new structure will allow us to focus on
being the #1 entertainment brand globally, across many platforms, in
formats that include short and long form video, posts, lists, quizzes,
micro-content, and more.

We have ambitious goals for both departments. We have an opportunity
to be the leading entertainment company for the mobile, social age.
And we are in position to build the the #1 global news brand for a new
generation who consume news differently than their parents, but care
passionately about what is happening in a quickly-changing world.

This structure will allow us to be better at entertainment and better
at news. It will also complete our shift to becoming a cross-platform
media company, with entertainment and news both living on our site,
our apps, and distributed on platforms across the web in multiple
native formats. And the new structure will better support our
international teams, which will continue to be organized regionally,
and draw on both BFN and BFEG for support, resources, and content.

Can’t wait to see what BuzzFeed Entertainment Group and BuzzFeed News
will do in the coming years!